The white fabric of Edgar’s nightgown clung to his body, uncomfortable and damp against his clammy skin. His face burnt, but his fingertips were freezing cold. Dragging his weakened muscles up to cover his face left him with no comfort, only the feeling of his own skin. He had yet to open his eyes, but through the thin skin a cover of red flooded his vision, disappearing seconds after. His door opened and closed quietly, and whoever had come in was making an effort to walk softly, too. He opened his mouth, but realized he didn't have the strength to speak, and closed it. He shifted his hands to dig his palms into his closed eyes, letting out a pained, discordant hum.

Andrew tiptoed to the too-small covered stool he had placed next to Edgar’s bed, sinking into it. The floor creaked from the change in weight, and he cringed at the sound. He leaned down, placing the bowl of cold water on the floor between his feet and Edgar’s bed, careful not to spill it or make too much noise. He removed his gloves, and rolled his sleeves up, leaving his hands and forearms free. He frowned at the pale scars that dotted his arms and hands, before flexing his fingers and dunking the rag he'd in the water, wringing out the excess.

It had been almost silent in Edgar's room until now, filled only with the sound of his labored breathing, the night-time hum of wildlife outside his window. Now, the sound of someone moving filled the space, too. In that time, Edgar had realized he did not know who was in his room with him. His head lolled to the side, feeling full of stone, and he attempted to glare at the man in his room. Even bleary-eyed from sleep and without his glasses, there was only one person it could have been: pale skin, white hair, red eyes that darted around nervously—and realizing it was only Andrew was oddly comforting to him. It would be difficult , he thought, even for me to forget his face . He tried again to speak, but only a harsh rasp left his mouth, leaving him unsure of what he even meant to say. 

Andrew flipped his bangs from his face, uncomfortable now to be watched at all, but especially while helping someone. He shifted the rag in his hands, freeing one to wipe it dry on his upper thigh. Reaching out with his cool hand, the backs of his long fingers and broad palm barely grazed Edgar’s forehead. Andrew withdrew his hand quickly as he had placed it to begin with, and oddly Edgar wanted to chase the cool feeling of his hand. He shut his eyes again, he realized, when Andrew had put his hand on him.

“You have… you have a fever. But that's a…all.” Andrew’s voice was somehow even quieter than his usual soft timbre, his stutter and strange accent comfortingly familiar in the empty feeling room. “I have… I want…” he shook his head in frustration and raised his hands up, gently clutching the rag, "It’s c…cold. It will, it’ll, it will help." Again, his cold hand brushed Edgar’s skin, this time moving sticky stray hairs from his forehead, before carefully smoothing the cold rag out. "If you can sit up later, I’ll," he drug the syllable out, struggling to catch up to where he needed to end the sentence, “I will br…braid your hair back, and it won't be as… as ann..n..noy—bad.” His voice was farther away now, and the sound of shifting wood filled Edgar's ears as he left his sore eyes closed. Andrew padded over to the small, single-pane window facing Edgar’s bed and forced it up, cracking the seal and leaving an inch open for air to cycle through. He tied back one half of the curtain, but left the other drawn so the morning’s sunlight wouldn't be as visible.

While he stood in Edgar's room, the two of them alone in the stuffy darkness, Andrew began to feel antsy. Is it weird to do this? He began to shift his leg, left to right, his worn leather boot scratching on the hardwood. It's not like either of us are very sociable … He worried his lower lip between his crooked teeth and resisted the urge to straighten out the tubes of paint and jars of God only knows what. He snapped his gaze back to Edgar in his bed, red-faced, with sweat beaded on his hairline, and clicked his tongue in discontent. He approached him again, carefully, as always, touching the cloth on his forehead. It had already become warm in that time alone. 

He peeled it gently from Edgar's forehead, dunking it softly back into the cool water with his off hand, before Edgar’s elegant fingers caught his left wrist, pulling his hand back to his forehead. He hummed in contentment as Andrew's fingers reflexively splayed across the hot skin of his face, his palm pressed to Edgar’s red cheek, fingers falling across this nose and forehead. Andrew tensed. He was not used to touching people, or being touched. Edgar’s blue eyes opened wider this time, staring at Andrew's pale face, seeming even whiter under the glow of the moonlight. His grip on Andrew's wrist tightened, not uncomfortably. Finally opening his mouth again, Edgar forced the words out, slurred and sleepy, “Don't leave my room." He pulled softly on his wrist, “Your hands are cold, and I like it." Just as quickly as he said it, his eyes began fluttering shut again, his grip unwavering. Andrew stared down at the sick man, now both embarrassed and obligated to stay by his side. I really hope he doesn't remember this when he wakes up. Andrew buried his face in his free hand, and began to wait for him to let go in his sleep.

Rain beat heavily on the foggy windows of the manor. The sound was soothing when it began, but as the rain picked up force into a thunderstorm, Luca Balsa was left awake for another night. His eyes, his eye, really, only the one still saw anything more than changes in light, strained in the heavy darkness that cloaked his room. There had been an oil lamp on the bedside table when he'd gotten here, but in short time he'd exhausted the kerosene staying up until twilight, and in his preoccupation with the events of the game, he hadn't thought to request for more. As a bolt of lightning became his only fleeting source of light, he'd realized he'd come to regret his forgetfulness.

He stood, only briefly, before his body remembered the damage it had suffered in the past, and his knees gave out beneath him. Falling forward, his left arm clipped his bed first, and he bit his tongue in restrained agony. He remained knelt on the floor for what felt like hours, but was in truth only minutes, before forcing himself up again. Luca blindly palmed the smooth wall beside his bed, holding as much of his weight as possible up through his right arm alone, until his fingers brushed the cold metal of his crutches. He maneuvered his forearms into them awkwardly, wincing again from the shift in weight on his left arm, and pushed himself off of the wall. Free from the support of it, he stayed in place until he caught his balance and remembered how to adjust his gait in order to actually walk.

When the crutches first showed up in his room, he'd been offended, believing it was a slight against his abilities. As the days passed and Luca had spent more and more time limping through the stately halls of the Oletus manor, his pride lost out to pain, as it almost always did. He’d decided then he'd use them when he was alone, and only when he was alone, but by that point it was a useless distinction — he was being watched, always, by his “teammates” and that mysterious Baron alike. It soon became unbearable walking without them.

Luca knew there was a music room somewhere in the manor, because he'd seen it when he arrived. Of course, that was days ago, and it was much brighter then, so it wasn't quite so difficult to shuffle through the winding halls that seemed to shift as soon as you'd stopped looking behind yourself. He was sure that even if he hadn't had the memory loss, finding the room would have been torture for nearly anyone. Of course, every shadow cast by white candles burning low into their holders and the horrible blue light of lightning striking near his temporary home left the manor’s lavish interior cold and foreign to him. Corners stretched further back than before, every door looked the same and felt like it was about to be opened, and the glossy hardwood seemed unstable under his feet. Or maybe it was simply his own shaking legs rendering the path more difficult to trek.

After the journey to find the room, it had felt more like an oasis, a great entertaining hall, the sort he remembered once attending as a teenager with a tall man who did not like the company. He shook his head violently, closing his eyes and willing the haze of the memory to leave him. It was too much to expect anything useful to come of thinking tonight. His eye wandered to the crown jewel of the room, the reason he dragged himself out of bed: a beautifully maintained grand piano. It was surely old by the looks of it, but it would have been hard to tell by the lack of wear to both the paint and the keys themselves. He nudged the stool aside and sat down, carefully balancing his crutches on the side of the instrument.

He ran his fingers over the keys, light enough to avoid depressing any and sending discordant sounds throughout the room. It was unlikely anyone would hear it from here, but there was no sense in annoying himself, either. It had been years since he'd played anything. Luca remembered being happy when he did, that he smiled sincerely then, and that he was surely good because it made his mother kiss the crown of his head when he'd finish playing for her. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable now to be alone in a room built to house a happy family, and looked idly at the music rack left empty before him. He felt a bit stupid now to look for any, he was sure he wouldn't remember how to read one now if he had tried, and besides that, he'd drive himself past half-blind trying to read it in the barely lit room. He would have to play without it, he still had his muscle memory, and if nothing else at least the horrible crash of thunder and nauseating howl of wind would be drowned out, even by poor playing.

The habits of his past gradually overcame him as he set about to play, his back extending to his natural height, proud and straight, as he hovered his hands above the center of the keys. His left hand shook slightly in the air before both came down into the beginning of the first sonata that came to mind. He realized quickly that even with the heavy numbness in his left hand, it hardly lagged behind, or at least it didn't seem like it did. In the time between playing the piano and not, he'd grown taller than he had realized, and in turn he had no need to rush his hands across the keys. It had come back to him oddly naturally, it felt just as natural to him as breaking the circuits of the strange machinery found on the manor grounds. The happiness he remembered didn't come back with the movements. But in his focus in playing for the empty room, the static lingering in the air and the horrible noise outside the walls, the rooms which shifted in front of your eyes, left him for the moment. The joy of the past is gone, but the motions of it remain.

After the screaming and shrill laughter had ended, the frantic sound of violin playing continued on. The casket did little to muffle the sound of it, nor did the passing of time do anything to slow it down. It had been hard enough to force him into the wooden box to begin with. Andrew was far from weak, he couldn’t afford to be with the job he kept before the manor. Even running perpetually on a half-empty stomach, there was no time to be wasted on the horrible feeling of fatigue. But even with the years of experience in dragging literal dead weight around, it was much different, he found, to force a man taller than himself into a casket while he thrashed around. He ran his gloved hand along his jaw, the skin and muscle tender and surely developing a bruise from the force of Antonio’s long, bony arms slamming against anything they could reach. He’d already gotten his nose to stop bleeding, it wasn’t that bad, and he was glad he wore black clothes because the stains that would surely be on it weren’t visible.
He had no reason to stay in the room with the casket, with Antonio, but he also had no reason to leave it, either. He’d never gotten to hear music much, outside of his mother’s humming when she was still around. Sometimes, if he could get close enough to the church without being seen, he would listen to the hymns played by the organists, and the Latin singing of the choirs. But it never lasted long, and it was always muffled, both by the thick church walls and the noise of the world around him. There was nothing wrong with listening to him play, even if the music was different from any he’d ever heard before. He hoped there wasn’t, at least, and that it was just Antonio playing frantically, and not the “demon” that he shared a body with. But even then, Andrew thought, is there anything wrong with hearing a devil play so long as he didn’t let it tempt him?
He adjusted himself on the uncomfortable wooden chair and continued staring down at the glossy wooden casket. At first, when Antonio had first arrived at the manor and the Baron DeRoss insisted Andrew participate in a game himself, he’d tried to speak to the violinist. While he’d never consider himself outgoing, or even friendly, he’d wanted to make an effort to at least try to get to know the man he’d be involved with for the indefinite future. But despite his best attempts to seem sociable, the man spent much of his time locked in his room, surely drunk and laughing strangely. Eventually, he’d stopped trying to speak with him much at all, the strained smile and haunting laughter finally unsettling him enough to curb his efforts. He thought it was a shame to see someone as skilled as Antonio participating in the games, even with that demon of his, and his strange, vain personality.
After a short period of working for the manor, Andrew understood what the games really entailed, although he couldn’t figure out what purpose they truly served. And despite his discomfort with it, the Baron’s smooth talking ways had convinced him that he was not only needed there, but that his work for the manor was a positive and righteous thing. He interred many of the participants of the games himself, carving each headstone and burying them all himself, and often found himself pitying them and their often brutal demises. He could do nothing to save them, mortally or to absolve the sins of their pasts, but he did his best to offer some sort of respectful burial. His own guilty conscience of what he had to do before coming here, overcoming him as well, perhaps.
It goes without saying, then, that when Mr. DeRoss had tasked him with joining one of his games; he had no desire to play. But there was little to do, the baron had offered him so much in the time he had worked for him. Besides, he would have been much worse off if he’d never come at all, so the game couldn’t have been worse than what he’d endure outside the manor grounds. And so he’d accepted, and tried to seem gracious for the chance.
In truth, he’d been largely correct, anyway. He couldn’t say he expected to be around so many eccentric performers, but it could have been much worse, he was sure of it. Nothing had gone all that badly to begin with, except Mr. Will’s odd and unpleasant attitude, and now the strange fit Antonio seemed to have after drinking too much. He’d come to understand other games were much more gruesome, and while he’d never been given details that he didn’t need to know, simply being face to face with someone’s remains can tell you enough to make you not need to ask anything more.
Andrew turned again to the casket on the floor, realizing that in the time he’d spent thinking about how he’d ended up in the manor, the violinist hadn’t yet stopped, but that the melody had slowed down greatly. He didn’t know much at all about the instrument he played, but it seemed now that he’d stopped only playing that one note, as well and beautifully as he had been before, and now played something with many more peaks and valleys to the tones. He’d felt a strange sense of relief at the change, and a stranger still desire to open the casket to gaze down at the man he’d been forced to inter alive within it.
He knelt on the floor beside it, running his hand along the smooth surface of the unadorned but well made lid, but stopped himself before he could curl his fingers around the lip and force it open. He pulled his hand back, afraid to open it, afraid to see how Antonio would react, and that he might stop if he had. He realized then that the sound of his knee striking the wooden floor near the head of the casket and the sound of his palm smoothing over the wood was surely audible from the inside as well. While the music didn’t yet stop, Andrew felt the creeping heat of embarrassment wash over him, unknowing if it had even been noticed. Antonio had been very out of it, after all. Drumming his fingers on his thigh, he felt the childish desire to try to “play along” overcome him through the burn of his embarrassment. He didn’t know the song Antonio was playing in there, or even if it was a famous one, really, but he let his middle and index finger tap gently upon the surface of the casket, the sound barely audible through the thick leather gloves and the lightness of his touch, and tried his best to follow along with the notes played by the violinist. The music stopped shortly after Andrew had found the basic rhythm of it, and his blood ran cold for a moment. Then, slowly, quietly, the music returned. It was simpler, like something you would teach a child who had never touched an instrument before, and he felt a small smile fight its way onto his face, as he resumed his efforts to tap along.